Infographic: How to create videos your audience actually wants to watch

Why is online video so important for content marketing? Here's a video that outlines what the research says

Here's short video showcasing new data from Pew Research that emphasizes the rising importance of online video:

VIDEO: What can we learn from the best Vines of 2013?

Really, I"m asking. If this compilation of 77 Vines drew more than 12 million viewers, what can we -- as content marketers and PR pros -- learn from them? What are the best practices, if any?

 

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How YouTube's MixBit differs from Twitter's Vine

From Kit Eaton at Fast Company:

MixBit's differentiator is hinted at in its name--instead of merely being able to share, view, and comment on videos from the stream or from people you follow on the service, you can also add to and remix content uploaded by other users or yourself. Remixed videos can be up to an hour long, which may make the app appeal to the kind of creative video minds that are into sweded clips or for users who want to string together their own mini-films.

How to embed Instagram photos and videos -- without hacking!

Instagram now offers video as well as photos. But embed the content into your site requires some understanding of HTML coding ... until now.

In this post on Hubspot, Genny Soskey provides a step-by-step tutorial.

Panel discussion: Best practices for creating online video

From Troy Dreier at OnlineVideo.net:

Today’s video workflows are moving to the cloud, but there’s no one-size-fits-all solutions that works best for all companies. Cloud video workflows vary widely in both cost and features.

At a Streaming Media East panel discussion on cloud video workflows, three experts helped attendees understand the different solutions available and choose the right one for their needs.

The panelists also gave out plenty of practical advice on related topics such as attracting an audience to online video.

5 basics to shooting great video

From Allison King at Ragan's

When planning and shooting your video, these production basics will help you look like a pro and prevent potential disaster.

• Use the "rules of thirds." Divide the shot into thirds horizontally and thirds vertically (so you have 9 imaginary equal sections). The points of interest should occur at 1/3 or 2/3 of the way up or across the frame.
• Pay attention to lighting; it can make or break your video. Don't, for example, shoot video of someone indoors who is backlit by a window.
• Bad audio is worse than bad video. More people will tolerate a poor quality image in a video. But bad audio, says Wolcott, makes the video unviewable.
• Get a lot of close-ups. Use the 80:20 rule: 80 percent close-ups and 20 percent wide shots. Close-ups is how you are able to convey action and emotion.
• Test across devices, including mobile devices.

How to create a video-editing station with an iPad

From Adam Dachis at Lifehacker:

Tablets are so popular that we've supposedly entered a "post-PC era," signifying the death of the personal computer. While we don't think that's happening quite yet, many people are actually getting things done on tablets. Well, at least Flickr user Matthew Pearce is, and he's got a tiny little workspace to prove it.

How to choose the right microphone for videography

Once you start working with video, you learn something early. While the quality of the video is important, the quality of the audio is absolutely vital.

An audience will put up with crappy video, but not crappy audio. It's just too annoying. Folks will just skip your video for the next one.

That's why you don't want to depend on your camera's built-in mic to capture audio. Instead, you will want to work with lapel mics, handheld wireless mics and shotgun mics. That can get expensive, but it's worth it.

I think it's fair to say that, if you have to choose between a top-of-the-line camera or first-rate audio equipment, you should put your money into the audio. (Unless you plan to never conduct an on-camera interview or to capture ambient sound.) It's that important.

With that in mind, here's a solid guide to selecting microphone from Videomaker.com

The Flip Cam gets new life as an iPhone app (what else?)

Don't know about you, but I really loved the FlipCam. It was elegantly designed, easy to use, and produced amazing HD video. The audio was lacking, but the next generation would have improved on that. Then Cisco bought it up, hyped it, then dumped it. But what can you expect from short-sighted greedy SOBs?

But now the Flip is reborn as an app for iPhone. All I can say is ... cool!

Video: How to build a swivel adaptor for the GoPro Hero 2

From Randy Werner's YouTube channel:

The better choice for driving video? Facebook or Twitter?

Chris Johnson at Brightcove has a strong opinion. He says the winner is Facebook, largely due to its built-in video player and its ability to embed the video into a newsfeed when shared. See what you think. Does his argument hold water? Is there a choice better than Facebook ... perhaps YouTube, Google+ or Vimeo?

• Beet.TV: Facebook Beats Twitter in Driving Video Views, Brightcove's Chris Johnston

Storytelling: How 1 and 1 makes 3 -- a lesson from Ken Burns

From video journalist Adam Westbrook: 

(Documentary filmmaker Ken) Burns has a difficult job: make stories from the past compelling on screen. It’s tough because your characters are dead and the action you want to film has long since happened. You are left with interviews with historians, still photographs and empty buildings. As a former historian myself it’s a genre I’ve long thought needs a fresh approach – but I’ve been looking at it in the wrong way.

Watch this short film (itself superbly produced by Tom Mason and Sarah Klein) and you’ll see the Ken Burns approach isn’t so concerned with what we see. For him it’s all about crafting a compelling story.

A down-and-dirty approach to time-lapse photography

Time-lapse photography can provide a very cool change of pace for your videos. In this presentation, Chris Jarvis demonstrates four time-lapse set-ups featuring a Nikon D3S, a Nikon D7000, and two GoPro Hero2s. The results are intriguing:



Instead of shooting a landscape, imagine using the same technique to capture time-lapse of a demonstration, or a process, or even an office in motion. There's a lot you can do with this technique.

Of course, there's more to this technique than just capturing the images. If you are working with a DSLR, here's a good place to start: http://www.lightstalking.com/timelapse

If you are working with a GoPro, start here: http://www.all-things-photography.com/gopro-hd-hero-time-lapse.html

There are plenty of other sources online, some for free, some for pay.

3 ways to create a YouTube page that grabs attention

From the Content Strategist blog:

According to company statistics, there are more than 800 million unique visits to YouTube with 4 billions hours of video are watched each month. A whopping 72 hours of video are uploaded onto the site every minute — that’s a lot of competition.

With so much content available, owners of YouTube pages need to make sure that they give people a reason to visit.

Here are some tips on how to make a YouTube page attractive and worthy of people’s attention.

How to build a room for recording voicovers and other audio

Until you try to record voiceover for one of your videos, you have no idea how noisy even an ordinary room can get. Plus a room's acoustics can wreak havoc with the ambient sound your microphone picks up. Here's a guide from the folks at the magazine Videomaker:

• Building an Audio Recording Room

Michael Rosenblum's new book 'iPhone Milllionaire' is now available on Amazon | #MoPR

Michael was working on this book when I attended his New York Video School's video boot camp in Manhattan last fall. The concept is both straightforward and astonishing: If you own an iPhone, you have the only tool you need to produce powerful video for paying markets. (That would include public relations.) My copy is on its way and I'm looking forward to spending the weekend reading it.

• Amazon.com: iPhone Millionaire: How to Create and Sell Cutting-Edge Video (9780071800174): Michael Rosenblum: Books

How to tell a better story in video | #MoPR

Here's a solid introduction from Casey Frechette at Poynter on using shot sequencing to improve storytelling in videos. It includes an outline of Michael Rosenblum's five-shot method.

What do media want from PR? More video, more photos | #MoPR

A new survey of journalists and publicists suggests there is a substantial gap between what reporters expect from and what they get from online newsrooms:

Bulldog Reporter:

The fact is, 86% of media websites use images and video with a story, and 80% of journalists and bloggers regard images with news as very important and say it significantly improves the chance of them using that content in a story. They expect to find images readily available in a company newsroom. Yet when asked what features journalists and bloggers think are important, only 4% of PR people said they thought images were very important, 22% said they were important and just over half (56%) of the respondents routinely add images to their press releases. When asked why they don't add images, 39% said they thought it was not necessary, 7% said they don't know how and 54% said they do not have the resources to produce visual content.

Telling a story in images and music | #MoPR

In this 5:50-minute film, Brad Kremer uses images and music to tell the story of landscape photographer Michael Levin's recent tour of Japan. He uses no narration, sound bites, or ambient sound -- and a minimal amount of text. Yet he tells a coherent story anyone can follow. He shot the film with a Canon 5D Mark II, a Canon TS-E 90mm f2.8 Tilt-shift Lens, a dynamic Perception dolly and a steadycam. He edited it on Final Cut Pro.



KI: Michael Levin from Brad Kremer on Vimeo.

 You can learn more about this project at PictureCorrect.com or at Brad Kremer's Vimeo Channel.